I'm back in London! I'm going to have to blog about my trip in stages, since there's too much stuff to go through all at once. So here is the Seattle part of the trip. It was FABULOUS getting to see my sister when I went to Seattle, I've missed her an awful lot.

Here's where she paints. Look at the funny picture she did of Stuart, which she gave to us and we managed to carry on to the airplane as hand luggage, yay! (She painted it from a photo I posted here ages ago.)

Here's a drawing I did of a house in her neighbourhood:

We visited her partner Mike at the Streamline Tavern where he tends bar one day a week (and an unrelated picture of my sister and I nursing a drink ten times colder than you'd get it in England (gives you a quick-freeze headache, it does):

Mike's a journalist and got on the front page of the New York Times, but unfortunately it was because his newspaper, the Seattle P-I, was going out of business that week. (The paper had been running since 1867; that's a long time for Seattle! Boo!)

And I got to meet up with a bunch of comics people! They were David Lasky (dlasky), Scott Faulkner (inkboy) and Mark Campos (mr_sadhead). Here's a photo I took of David in his studio, where he's working on a comic about the Carter Family, look out for that one!

We all met up at the Alki Tavern, a jolly biker bar where they do cheap Taco Tuesdays, along a strip of beach where I used to go on a lot of walks with my family. (My dad had a thing about the key lime pie at the Alki Bakery.) Here's Mark, and Scott's wife, Pamela; and David (it was my sister's idea to have her and Scott shake their heads to make David look a bit glum in the middle):

Here's a picture I did of Scott, but then I got bored with it and redrew it:

Do you remember the letter comic I made for David? Well, he totally bowled me over with the most AMAZING 16-page letter comic in reply! It's one of my best treasures now, I am still in awe of it. Here you can see the cover, and David's picture of me looking very happy:

(You can see more photos from the evening over on David's Flickr page. ) I also got to meet David's partner, Leeann, and their two cats, Bear and Lizzie. Here's my picture of Leeann:

My sister and David knew this great Mexican place called Gordito's, where they had burritos the size of babies (yes, really):

When we went for a drink afterwards with Mary and Mike, the six of us did a comics jam with six separate sheets of paper, passing them around after each panel. This one's my favourite:

Great to see you, Seattle people! Sorry if I missed you, I was trying to spend most of the time with my sister, so there are a bunch of childhood friends I probably should've caught up with and didn't. I did get to see my Taiwanese honourary sister, Joyce Lee (she lived with us in high school), who took us out for very tasty dim-sum, and my old school chum Adam Conley, which was great. ... Okay, Alaska pictures another day!

Comments

Thanks Dale, it was a great trip! Now it's back to work, I'm giving a talk at Greenwich University tomorrow! Must get my head back in gear... I think I am going to wear the green vintage dress my sister found for me at Seattle Goodwill.

It was so great to see you in person. People in London are lucky to be able to see you in person fairly frequently (if they know where to look). I meant to talk to you about my methods for teaching comics workshops, but I guess I could type that info easily enough.

I like the 'Seattle's Storyteller' ad, how cool! - and your sister displaying it lovingly -- so sweet!

It was fabulous getting to hang out with you!! And I'm so glad we got to meet Leeann, and Bear's bathtub antics were pretty funny. I think he felt it was a more appropriate place to have a conversation with us than in the front hall.

Ha ha, it is! I didn't even get around to asking her about it, but it's pretty funny. I used to have a Bulgarian art teacher who had a whole drawer of dead crows. I don't think they were taxidermied, though, they were just kind of dried out.

Welcome back, Sarah!Your sis is so cool. I love the pic of you two with the....root beer? Coke? The frosty bevvie, anyhow :)See you soon, I hope!best,Ellen PS So much to catch up on...Stephen and I can't make it to the cartoonists' thing on the 18th - any news on that?PSS Our trip to India is so frakked...it was going along beautifully, and then, WHAM, stupid visa problems again. Will we never learn? DO THIS STUFF YEARS IN ADVANCE!PPSS Think you or one of your studio mates would like an A1 portable drawing table? It's going cheap :)